Hope springs eternal

Ten years ago The Shawshank Redemption was a low-key prison film that didn't recoup its costs. Slowly it has become one of the most popular movies of all time - and, for some, it has even been life-changing. Mark Kermode asks why

The defunct state reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, is a cold and imposing place, one part cathedral to two parts Castle Frankenstein. A vast monolith whose gothic arches resemble a house of both worship and horror, the building seems tailor-made to combine the fortressed needs of a prison with the spiritual ministrations of a church - a unique blend of punishment and salvation. It was here, in the early Nineties, that writer / director Frank Darabont filmed The Shawshank Redemption, a powerful parable of a wrongly convicted man who triumphs over terrible adversity, shedding his shackles to escape into dreams of the movies, spiritually liberating his fellow inmates in the process. And it was here, several years later, that I came looking for an answer to a question which has baffled many cynical film critics: how did a low-key prison drama, which was considered a box-office flop on its initial release, become one of the most popular movies of all time?

Like most who reviewed The Shawshank Redemption when it was first released in 1994, I was impressed, but I had no idea just how important the film would become to some audiences. Certainly, I couldn't predict that in a few years' time it would be voted Best Film of the Nineties and Fourth Best Film of all time by the readers of Empire magazine; that it would rival The Godfather and Star Wars for the top spot of the Internet Movie Database subscribers' poll; or that it would be quoted on national television by (of all people) Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who had apparently taken comfort in its message of redemption.

Now on the eve of a tenth anniversary re-release, the film is widely considered a feelgood masterpiece to rank alongside Casablanca and It's A Wonderful Life as a perrenial audience favourite. So when, in 2001, Channel 4 asked the director Andrew Abbott and myself to make a documentary about The Shawshank Redemption, it was to this extraordinary audience reaction that we turned. What we found, particularly in America, was fans who were having what can only be described as a 'religious experience' with the film, who likened The Shawshank Redemption to a latter-day retelling of the story of the Gospels.

One fan we met was a former inmate of Mansfield Reformatory who had renounced a life of drugs and crime to become a trainee pastor, and who considered The Shawshank Redemption to be a touchstone text on his road to salvation. Many others were just regular folk who had endured tough times in their lives, and who found an uplifting message in the story of one man's refusal to abandon hope in the most apparently hopeless situation. As the film's star, Tim Robbins, told me: 'It's a film about people being in jail, and having the hope to get out. Why is that universal? Because although not everybody has been in jail, on a deeper, more metaphysical level, many people feel enslaved by their environment, their jobs, their relationships - by whatever it is in the course of their lives that puts walls and bars around them. And Shawshank is a story about enduring and ultimately escaping from that imprisonment.'

The Shawshank Redemption began life as a short story by horror guru Stephen King, published in the Different Seasons anthology which also included The Body, filmed by Rob Reiner as Stand By Me. A departure from scary fare such as Carrie and The Shining, the story, entitled Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was described by King as 'a prison-break story in the grainy old Warner Brothers / Jimmy Cagney mould', which caught the attention of aspiring film-maker Darabont. Having made an early short film based on another King story, The Woman in the Room, Darabont had since been racking up screenwriting credits on such second-rate horror fare as the remake of The Blob and the sequel to the remake of The Fly. Now he was facing the prospect of making his directorial debut with 'a Chucky-type shocker' about which he was less than enthusiastic. Eager to attempt something more artistically ambitious, Darabont set to work on an adaptation of Shawshank, crafting a screenplay which was low on action, big on characterisation, and unfashionably lacking in car chases, romance, or explosive special effects. The resulting script, which Darabont was determined to direct himself, soon became a 'hot property', attracting the attention of such A-list stars as Nic Cage and Tom Cruise. Ultimately, Tim Robbins landed the key role of new Shawshank inmate Andy Dufresne, while Morgan Freeman was cast as old lag Red, a character originally written as a gruff white Irishman. (When asked why he's called Red, Freeman wryly replies: 'Maybe it's because I'm Irish' - a gag which accentuates the film's admirable colour blindness.)

In 1994, The Shawshank Redemption garnered little public attention despite some glowing reviews. On its first-run American release, it recouped only $18 million of its $35m investment - this at a time when 'blockbusters' were regularly raking in more than $100m. Not even seven Oscar nominations could help it compete with the success of hits such as Speed, Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump. 'I don't know what happened when it first came out,' Morgan Freeman later admitted. 'In fact I remember someone asking me on the night of the Academy Awards why I thought Shawshank had done so poorly at box-office when films like Dumb and Dumber, which opened the same season, had done so well. After all, Shawshank had got pretty good reviews, whereas Dumb and Dumber had been thoroughly and relentlessly trashed by critics.' Theories offered in defence of Shawshank's box-office failure ranged from the incomprehensibility of the title (Robbins recalls fans asking 'What was that Shinkshonk Reduction thing?') to the unpopularity of 'prison movies' and the lack of any female characters to widen the audience demographic. According to Hollywood marketing law, Shawshank was a film tailor-made to fail, and it did just that - at least in cinemas.

On video, however, it was a different story. Despite its disappointing box office turn-out, Warners shipped 320,000 rental copies of The Shawshank Redemption in the US, a figure which they happily admit was 'kinda outta whack' with its poor performance in cinemas. Not only would Shawshank become one of the top renting tapes of 1995, its subsequent TV airings would continue to pull in viewers in record-breaking numbers. Against all industry expectations, a film which had, in effect, been rejected by audiences in cinemas was rapidly shaping up as a home-viewing hit with both men and women. So what was happening? Ask any video dealer and they'll tell you that the key factor in Shawshank 's unexpected success on tape was simply word of mouth. Renters who had given the film a wide berth in cinemas were now taking The Shawshank Redemption home on the recommendation of friends and family, increasing numbers of whom were having profound, even life-changing, experiences with the movie. Repeat viewing was a big factor, too, with fans coming back to rent the same film time and time again, developing an intense personal relationship with the themes and characters in the comfort of their own home.

The intimacy of the home-viewing experience seems to have been of crucial importance for The Shawshank Redemption. As Darabont attests 'I've gotten mail from people who say: "Gosh, your movie got me through a really bad marriage," you know, or "a really bad divorce". Or "it got me through a really bad patch in my life" "a really bad illness" or "it helped me hang on when a loved one died".'

One viewer described their tape of The Shawshank Redemption as 'like a friend in the sitting-room, who talked to me and picked me up when I was down'. And from such intimate encounters came the quasi-religious readings which would transform The Shawshank Redemption into a latter-day Gospel for some viewers. David Bruce, of the 'spiritual' pop culture website HollywoodJesus.com observes: 'It's an example of film as therapy. The Shawshank Redemption gives you hope; you can go on; you can go forward.'

For those who want to find them, there are indeed ample religious motifs woven into the fabric of The Shawshank Redemption. Some are deliberate and darkly ironic - none more so than the character of Warden Norton, described in King's text as a 'Jesus-shouting son of a whore', and played by Bob Gunton as a scripture-quoting demon closer to Richard Nixon than Billy Graham. 'I believe in two things,' Norton tells the 'new fish', Andy, 'Discipline and the Bible. Here you will receive both. Put your trust in the Lord - your ass belongs to me.'

Elsewhere, the symbolism is implied rather than announced, with the falsely convicted Andy resembling a latter-day Christ figure who, at one point, seems to vanish from his tomb-like cell only to be reborn in the baptismal waters of a nearby creek, causing Norton to scream: 'Lord, it's a miracle!' And of course, the most famously iconic image from the film is that of a stripped Andy standing with his arms outstretched, his head turned heavenward, in a moment of agony and ecstasy clearly resembling the crucifixion.

The deeper one delves into The Shawshank Redemption, however, the more the search for such religious symbols becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. While immersed in writing a short book about the movie for the British Film Institute's 'Modern Classics' series last year, I suddenly noticed an 'obvious' parallel between a key scene in which Andy procures beers for twelve fellow inmates which made them feel like 'the Lords of all creation' and the legend of the Last Supper in which Jesus hands wine to his disciples with the promise of eternal life. When my manuscript was finished, I sent a copy to Darabont who expressed his delight at my 'beer communion' reading, but insisted that no such interpretation had ever occurred to him. 'But isn't that the point?' he wrote. 'That people should find their own meanings in the film. The more the merrier; bring them on.'

For Tim Robbins, the true significance of The Shawshank Redemption has nothing to do with religion, but resides in the fact that 'it's a film in which you actually see a relationship between two men which isn't based on car chases, or scoring some women, or some kind of caper'. Morgan Freeman concurs, adding that the story of Andy and Red is the story of 'a sort of love relationship' which goes 'deeper than just friendship. But to tell you the truth, I just don't know what it is about that film that resonates so with people.'

'All I know,' concludes Robbins 'is that there isn't a day when I'm not approached about that film - approached by people who say how important that film is to them, who tell me that they've seen it 20, 30, 40 times, and who are just so... thankful.'

· The Shawshank Redemption by Mark Kermode is published by BFI Modern Classics. The tenth anniversary re-release of The Shawshank Redemption is on 9 September.